Surplus....

While reorganising ships and gear over the last while for both my mains I've ended up with a list of surplus ships.

On a side note its worth checking the cargo holds of ships you've not used in a while... I found quiet a lot of stuff, and in one ship a while stack of BPO's all researched. I wonder why I didn't miss them before!
 
Being the hoarder/collector I'll always gravitate towards keeping an 'investment' unless I can get a better price for it.  In the past I've used such ships to start up an activity in a new area. All these are pve fit's or rigged but unfitted.

Main#1:

          Hawk
          Buzzard
          Hookbill
          Manticore (rigged but unfitted)
          Navy Caracal
          Thorax  (rigged but unfitted)
          Hurricane (rigged but unfitted)
          Dominix (rigged but unfitted)
          Typhoon (rigged but unfitted)
          Tempest (rigged but unfitted)
          Tengu

Main#2:
          Hawk
          Buzzard
          Hookbill
          Tengu


With the rep grind for SOE on an alt in my mind the list of ships for both characters shouts out grind rep for two factions that I've not paid much attention to... Gallente and Minmatar. In the past i have done some amount of damage to both those rep counts. I could use the Hawk on both mains to get level 1 and 2 missions out of the way then take the tengu's out for both in level 3's and get to lvl 4's fast.

I could also check on the epic arc's, I'm sure its been 6 months since I've done my last one of those. I could try them for Amarr and Caldari to start. Then after the rep grind and some cosmos missions do the arc's for Gallente and Minmatar. But I think that may be problematic due to the way the erp and standings work, I think it will damage the ones I have too much.

Once rep is done with I could leave a BS for that race in a mission hub, Dominix in Gallente space etc...


All of that is long term and would take a long time to get going/doing.. I think I need more ideas, something on the lines of both chars using the ships they have in common for some "project". I might move them to an old missioning hub that I used to run in with a few other pilots... I could try and hook up with them if they are still in the same area/doing stuff. Nice idea but I rarely see them on ... still it could be interesting...

I am going to disregard my own waffle and not needlessly complicate stuff, at some stage I'll get around to doing the epic arc's again and at some stage I will grind more rep with more factions. I'll leave the bulk of the ships where they are. And move along with doing stuff I already have planned.

This time last year....

I had a look back at some old info that I had dating back between the 15-Nov-2012 & the 20-Dec-2012.

There are a number of things that were happening.

--My Minmatar alt was in a tempest and was apparently doing well, but lacked a dps punch to finish some missions off. Leaves me wondering why almost a year later I still had her in a tempest, perhaps I should have started to really play the character to see that she wasn't able for it. But I think the indecision of what to do with her and a lack of further training lead to a lot of faffing about that delayed my final decisions.

--The hi-sec POS was in full swing and PI was paying well for the fuel/stockpile of fuel. Tho it seemed to have gotten a few visitors doing flyby's, no war-decs came tho.

It looks like I also consolidated my PI setup to be able to better maintain them and the POS.

--I commented on my routine "Usual again… it’s a nightly thing… POS / PI/ Skills q’s" 

Some things never change all that much. More about that lower down.

--The pre patch changes to my skill q's for ship changes due in that winter patch was well under way.

Essential skills to get before hand were:

Racial Frigs to III ( IV better )

Racial cruisers to IV

Destroyer to IV ( V better )

BC to V 

A quote I noted from back then was from Jesters Trek:

 First: to those of you who think I forgot the whole "need Cruiser III" thing.  No, I didn't.  But let's cover it briefly:

• To get free Racial Destroyer skill points for each race, you're going to need to have Racial Frigate III for each race, taken separately.
• To get free Racial Battlecruiser skill points for each race, you're going to need to have Racial Cruiser III for each race, taken separately.

So, if you have Amarr Frigate III, Gallente Frigate III, Minmatar Cruiser IV, Caldari Cruiser IV, Destroyers IV, and Battlecruiser V, you will receive:

• all four racial destroyers at IV;
• Minmatar and Caldari Battlecruiser V; and,
• Amarr and Gallente Battlecruiser skills will be untrained.

Really though, this is mostly going to affect new EVE players, not existing EVE players too much.  Still, if you have characters that you want to pick up more SP for per my Recommendation post, keep what's above in mind.

--I seem to have been talking about getting an alt to a wormhole corp..... guess it never happened. I'd say it was due to wanting to skill up that char before the move... more plan then action last year. At least the action is on now with skills in training and the move should follow in teh new year.

--I also seemed to have had a lot of problems with screen shots. They would only show a black screen. I recall this happening again this year but it was due to running two clients and taking screen shots in hi-res settings. Fixed by taking "normal" screenshots.

 

--Perhaps the most interesting thing I had written was:

"In reflection I am sure I am really not playing the game… I’m maintaining characters …. The few POS / PI and skill q changes are all a daily maintenance thing… housekeeping… unlike wow, in eve I don’t’ go and  do dungeons…. I don’t pvp ….  And anything you do in eve takes so long its either a huge waste of time and resources or an ass hat in game wastes you in 4 seconds…. " I think something must have peeved me off. Interesting.

--Again my RL friend came back to eve "with lots of plans and what if’s" But as per usual nothing stuck in game or better to say that nothing came from the plans.

--Apparently I was :   

"Was a little stunned to read that Space noob has made his 1^st Billion!! And setup a POS

4 or 5 months into the game!!   I think I was lucky to have a raven for lvl 4’s  months in!!! Never mind the rep that’s needed for a hi-sec POS setup…. I only just did that with my main and I'm now years in…!!!!"

--And:

"The patch went off great … ships were gotten, drones and skills purchased, the only thing I paid over the odds for was the BPO for the venture I put that into the POS fast for research and plan to do copies and making some etc.. skills on characters was also sorted fast."

--Finally, my Amarr alts corp was working and attempting to recruit hi-sec carebears. 

I don't think I was too bad at all as a low level overlord of the universe.

 

So all in all an interesting few blasts from the past. 

Those compared to today, obviously there are some parallels, it is the same game after all.

Eve really does suck you in with the micromanagement of skills, stuff and characters in general. It may be dark and foreboding but everyone makes the game their own, or more along the lines of Eve gives you the tools and you dig the hole your in.

Skill - always the same, new ones come out and you train em, changes to ships mean you need to change the q's and setup new priorities for the order of skills to be trained.

PI - has ended

POS - has ended

Character's - Mains - are pretty much as they were back then, more skills and more assets but less activity I think.

Character's - Alts - are pretty much the same as well, but more refined in skills and assets. Some have a bit more training and one has a lot more training. All alts have been played more. And will be played more as time goes on. 

I'll have to wait and see how my planning goes into action to know for sure.

The healer...

While levelling up our trio of characters with (un)healthy amounts of dungeon running we had a few running jokes, one was to have all three of us have our characters roar either in unison or one after the other. annoying I'm sure to all how heard us or were in a dungeon with us. Another was to keep looking at maps when we already knew where we were going... especially our tank friend... he may have run loads of dungeons and knew them like the back of his hand but it was constantly funny to see the maps being whipped out at the most random and simple of places.

I posted some pics when describing a little about the levelling. and I missed getting a pic of our healer, here she is with her electrocuted hair look.

A new week...

I’ve always used a usb stick to keep my own files in one place while on the go, mainly gaming and blogging related stuff while at work. Easy to keep and move about with, but also as I discovered last Friday easy to forget when its not in “its proper place”, it happens. The more the day went on the more I noticed it’s absence.  Like mislaying a phone, I felt like something is missing. So I ended up putting info onto another stick and merged it later, including stuff I would have put up on Friday. Guess this is going to be a longer more waffle filled post than usual.

As soon as I had gotten in the door from work on Friday my friend was texting asking if I was gonna be on eve, lol, late one day and early the next, he works from home so it's no wonder he has "odd" hours.

So dinner went on and I did my usual eve housekeeping on the “mains”, by that time dinner was ready and once done I hopped onto eve… for 3 hours of level 2 missions. It was a grind.
About the last hour was a real pain, the nearest agent was a security lvl 2 and I put it out of action by declining a mission. I didn’t’ want to hurt too much faction rep with the grind and had declined a mission. This lead to a distribution agent and a lot of jumping about.
As I was jumping with a full cargo hold I missed an opportunity:

Rep was put up a good bit by the end of that session, over the weekend I completed the lvl 2’s and got the 3.01 rep to move onto level 3's. It was so good doing distribution missions that I found myself playing Battlefield 2 multiplayer on the xbox lol.  
With luck we can get some lvl 4’s going soon for rep/isk and some gear from the LP store.

I got an alt to donate 35 mill to my Amarr alt and used it in getting and equipping a destroyer and a cruiser.

I also checked the ship / gear on my Minmatar alt again, to really slim down even more what was really usable. So a Gnosis on that character went to the SOE rep grinding alt. It's been put through a few missions so far but it's not as hardy as a Drake I would have taken, still good. But I'll be hopping into a Raven for the level 4's and then in two weeks (training going well) a Tengu. My Friend may have a marauder by then and we will both be hammering the lvl 4's on both ends (Warp into mission, he hits the BS's working his way down and I hit the frigs/cruisers and work up).

I need to start to "play" my null sec alt, he has no real isk to get him off the ground. Since starting him I wanted him to be free from ever getting anything from another alt/main. I need the isk to get the PI done and making money properly…. To do that I need to get isk in .. to get isk in I need to rat for bounty, mine and sell the stuffs I pick up. But that’s a few hours work that didnt' quite get done last weekend. Will see how it works out. The alliance is really well established and has not problem doing well, am glad to be part of the corp I am in. The last time I was in this area of space I was much deeper in and part of another corp. On the POCO/COCO front the alliance have 70 planets converted to the cause.

I did a tiny bit of ratting, not much but it ended after 2 BS’d marked as having over 1mill bounty each that really damaged me, the harder/higher bounty BS's have a tank that my alt can't break..… 

I was determined to salvage what I could and that lead to me having to strap on a repper and get that fixed.

I'm thinking along the lines of SOE rep grind/lvl 4's when my friend is on and null alt when he is not about. 

On my mains I've updated a lot of skills and gone back to train some skills that I had previously ignored. I think the new ISIS ship identification is a great new addition. It definitely makes me want to skill up some more in area's I have missed and I can't wait to see if they do the same things for the likes of industry.
My first main now has all of the subsystems to lvl 3 ... I will always use a Tengu but no harm in having all the others as well. I just need Gal and Minm Cruisers to V to learn the T3 for each. I think Gal will be done first as I still have some ships that were given to me that require the Gal Cruiser to V to hop into.

I have also renamed the POS in Hi-sec again and will be keeping it... Will see what the future holds... it may be used one day again.

I closed down hi-sec PI on my mains. I had noticed that most of the custom offices have been taken over by some corps. With one final removal of all PI materials and a sell in Jita it proved to be very little margin for profit. Loosing about 40 to 50 % of my profits a week per char.... why should I keep going in the PI game to line someone elses pockets. Its a very cut my nose to spite my face emotion. The only PI that I will do will be on my alt in null. 
I've also noticed that a lot of the people that had taken over offices have themselves been attacked.

PI in hi-sec is proving to be very volatile on the PI side, I wonder if and when it will "stabilise".
Evehermit has had some good posts about his experiences in adjusting to Rubicon PI.
http://evehermit.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/and-1-makes-4/
http://evehermit.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/paying-attention-until-my-brain-hurts/
http://evehermit.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/existing-through-the-ignorance-of-others/

As the expansion stuff has hit a lot of people have been trying the new gear out… Jita undock was filled with these depot’s:

And as I writing I saw an entry on Reddit that sums it up ….

http://i.imgur.com/RnQ91t9.png

I have yet to give the moble depot a go... 

 

On my second main I bought 2 new command ships and fitted them up in the missioning hubs that were lacking them … seemed better to do so over the weekend while I waited on other stuff. It's a lower cost effective ship with lots of potential....

Since getting them I am not as opposed to the new model changes that were made. The new command drake does look cool. I admit it.

I also noticed that the machariel had dropped in price to about 850Mill… I was tempted to buy but said no and they promptly returned to 1.2 Billion. I think that the price going back up was due to too many people buying them..... the price as of writing is back down ... 797Mill in Jita....tempting.....

Perspective

Interesting views/perspective.

http://gazingeveuniverse.blogspot.be/2013/10/i-want-to-be-space-entrepreneur-again.html

Games I wanted to get....

Two main games I wanted to get were:

Splinter Cell - Blacklist
&
GTA V

But for some reason even feeling the hype before their launch I have no interest in getting either of these games now....
Skyrim, the new Xcom, wow and Eve are plenty to be going on with.... 

Maybe if I had more free time I'd get them and give'em a good try.

Also had the idea of getting a second hand or cheap PS3 to get playing Dust 514, I've got the collectors edition "buffed" gear to use and a friend in work says dust its great... would like to give that a go as well.....

Trials and tribulations of a gamer.... lol

Not to plan.... very selfish of me....

After chatting with my friend and fellow Eve player by text yesterday he was excited about the new expansion. And we both said we would be on at 7, I was on about half 6 so went ahead and did my usual PI and skills maint/house(hanger)-keeping. 

Checking the alt's SOE rep that I wanted to use and seeing that it wasn’t high enough to get level 4’s, I hopped in his assault frig and headed to the nearest lvl 2 agent and ran a few missions. My m8 was also at the lvl 2 stage.

At about 7:30 and with no sigh of him and I got a call from my other half and she was having fun in wow with guildies doing achi and heroics for newer guildies so I hoped onto wow to tag along with one of my lower 90's.

I checked back about 8:30 so see if he was on eve, but he was not. 

I went on with wow and left eve afk in the background. I got a text from him at about 9:30 saying “you afk” lol. I was but at that stage I was in a raid that was finishing up… once it was done my other half wanted help with her alt's stuff in wow so I made my excuses to him and logged eve off. 

I will be back on tonight at the same time to run the SOE missions … told him that last night and sent him a mail today… with luck it goes ahead…

When you get that call....

.... or text from a friend you just happen to mention in conversation but haven't seen in a while, its funny how they can sense you talking about them, so they appear.

I mentioned last week and was about to mention him again when he text me today saying how great the new expansion changes are. He wants to grind SOE rep (to try and get some LP stuffs, maybe a ship, despite the extra cost of getting it in hi-sec.)


He is the proverbial magpie when it comes to something new. It's shiny and he has to go after it no matter what, but either looses interest or is distracted by something else shiny very quickly.

Anyway its something do to and if all else fails I can buy some sisters launchers and probes from the LP store. Time to check my alts SOE rep as I think he can get lvl 4 missions for SOE.

Eve lists.... to ignore or not to ignore....

Lots of players have lots of ways to track things. Eve is well known for its players keeping spreadsheet companies in business.

I seem to have evolved two lists, I have both a major list and a minor list.

The major list is a “What I want to do with X character" list.
Examples would be along the lines of “ pilot a marauder, run SOE missions for LP and get income from incursions”, so they are more the long term things I want a character(s) to do.

The minor list is a much more short term 'To Do' list.
Along the lines of : “check PI daily, buy X item and move to Y when Z is done”.
The todo list is just an extended house-keeping list.

It's nice to have long term intentions listed.
It’s nice to have a todo list to keep track of the little things
But for things to do in the game as structured, lasting and bloggable I need this new project list to bridge the gap.

Besides it will also stop my indecisiveness, bringing back real game-play rather then what it has become. I'm not saying it will completely stop me logging in checking PI, changing skills and then faffing about, but it wont' hurt either.

I will do it per "activity" and list in what chars I think I can have fun with as a main activity for them.

A weekend of wow.

Last Saturday I and my other half with a RL friend all hit the wow levelling machine for about 7 hours, getting some low level alts ( level 40ish ) up to 79, there were some variations as some chars had more heirlooms than others but we all rounded out nicely.

I started the day by hopping on to my mage and doing a few LFR's.

Always a pain to wipe.

Better then the gold/gold option.

But once every one was on we grouped up and started dungeoning.  

My friend was tanking on his paladin and my other half was on as her alt priest.

For my levelling alt I picked my druid - Boomkin spec.

The Druid at 75

The Tank

 He was the only on get get a "wow you transmoged your looms... cool!!" comment... Hmmmmmmm

 

 

Needless to say the dings and achi's came swiftly

A real tree hugger!

Last night we levelled up to 80, we got some new greens to replace older gear. So it may not take a bit longer to level up to 90... with luck the 3 of us will get :)

X-Rebirth

Over the weekend I saw an add on Steam for a game I had thought looked to be a great game to get.
I didnt' even realise it was out yet. X-Rebirth.
But on doing some research since I saw it last I am sad to say it is not the game is was said to be.
Lacklustre AI/NPC integration and in game bugs make this game a bad buy.
Unless there is a passive patch to rebuild/rewrite massive amounts of code and fixes I will be staying well away from this.  So disappointing... it was hyped to be a Solo Eve player experience.

Some info/reviews:

http://www.incgamers.com/2013/11/egosoft-apologise-for-the-state-of-x-rebirth


http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/x-rebirth

http://angryjoeshow.com/ajsa/topic/5391-x-rebirth-review/

Xcom - Enemy Within

 

I got a chance to tryout the new Xcom - Enemy Within.  I got it on steam a while ago and was a little puzzled that it didn't appear in the library list of games.  I was more puzzled that the main game Xcom Enemy Unknown had a 4.2(ish) GB "update". But I guessed it was combining the two games into one, and was correct. When I clicked to play it game a choice between the old or new game.

The visual seem a little more crisp and detailed than before, and the sounds seem to have been enhanced as well. The sounds seem to be more gratifying than they were before... maybe its just me :)

The intro and main menu screen are all standard and the music is as good as always.

There are plenty of options just like the main game and for the first attempt at the new expansion I kept the tutorial mission on....

I'm not sure if it was my mind playing trick on me but I seemed to be playing the main game again... What had looked like the expansion was running me through the same old tutorial....

Survivor!

You still get a survivor from the initial tutorial combat as well as the usual 3 dead soldiers to mourn in the barracks.

On top of that, the same old faces where there to get the story telling off to a start... just the same as the main game... 

 So off I went to start the game....

... The only differences I can see with the starter mission and the old game is the "MELD" stuff you can collect.  I can only presume that as the game goes on it will allow new additions to be made in gearing up. There are new maps that look detailed and some new inter scene character cinematics, like them jumping onto ropes to get to ground level instead of landing.

There is a new option for medals in the barracks, as you play you acquire medals, these can be granted special bonus's. So when you grant a medal to a soldier they get the added bonus.  This is a nice touch.

As I played through some of the missions the art does seem to have been tweaked well. I've only come across one new type of alien that is fixated on single soldiers and has a fetish for chocking them.

All in all I look forward to see how this plays out. Knowing the old game and facing this I know I will bide my time to gear up and get as much as I can researched and built before moving on with any story lines.

The one minor fault I can see so far, is that I've grown to natural stick my soldiers in to a defencive stance.
The AI seems a little less active then before. they do not seem to flank like they used too.
So far my mission have played out the same. My team takes cover in overwatch, the team has mutually defencive arcs of fire. I send out a scout to poke the hornets nest. Once the aliens are found and come after the scout I then wipe them out. Either by having them follow the scout to the main group for an ambush. Or they go after the scout and are killed by overwatch. A strategy that I hope will change when multiple alien types are in mission.

And a tip to start with... always tag the MELD, it gets damaged very easily, especially when the rookies and starter aliens can't hit each other and destroy all the scenery.

The last live event ... less of my ranting...

Just had time to read back over some entries from Greedy Goblin.
I may not be a  100% fan of the guy or his methods but this post is imho a very true assessment and much better than my last rant:

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/the-largest-awox-in-history-of-eve.html

Another Monday morning...

For the first time this "winter" I got to see my own breath this morning, but the forecasters are saying no snow this week :(

The weekend was a good one and saw a lot of gaming. Wow, Eve and the new Xcom got a good bit of play.

I'll try and do up a post about the wow and xcom and stick to Eve with this one.


I've tidied up a good bit of clutter from the Alts, and evened out the mains gear/ships and isk to be a bit more uniform across the universe. That's a job that never ends. Thinking you have a perfect for all contingency mission running hub setup only lasts when you dont' use it.  Now with the new expansion on the way new skills and new gear to potentially use, its going to need more work. Depend if I like the new tractor beam deployable. Maybe a depot to use when out and about.

I was surprised to see that my Minmatar alt can fly a T3... very surprised, I wasn't aiming for it and given that she can barley fly a Tempest in a lvl 4 I am not gonna let a T3 near her. But still its a tempting "interest". This is just a case in point where I see this, get tempted with it in a few weeks when I can see taht for a few more days training she can dop things a "little better", then prob loose a T3 in a level 4. lol

I also finished of the last pre patch PI hauling. I think I'll finish up what I can with it tonight and then see what overlord swoops in to take ownership. Plugging along as I go until I think its not worth it.

I know I said there was doom and gloom ahead for my PI but hearing about the likes of RvB, Greedy Goblin and a few others on the net looking to take over large amounts of space for POCO's I think I was right to be gloomy. Even my alts alliance is thinking of getting all the hi-sec POCO's leading to their Nullsec home.  

Interesting developments indeed. I never fully setup that null alts PI. I must try that out again. something else to add to the todo list.

The patch notes for Rubicon were out last Friday night I think. 1.2 GB of a download iirc. With luck I don't have much hassle downloading that over a dongle. But I doubt it!

Am looking forward to the New Ships, new skills are like a necessary evil, the Depot may be of interest as long as its not just the meta version that has the 48 hour reinforcement timer. Will have to wait and see how it all goes.  Load up those long skills tonight just in case. I won't mind getting free sp for CCP tech problems if there are any...   


Here are the patch notes:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-rubicon